The Secret Lives of Words: A good time for a beer: National Beer Day

Rick LaFleur More Content Now

Friday

Apr 5, 2019 at 10:53 AMApr 5, 2019 at 10:57 AM

In an ode trumpeting the suicide in 30 B.C. of the brilliant but (to most Romans) subversive Egyptian queen Cleopatra, the poet Horace proclaimed, nunc est bibendum, "now we must drink." Horace even urged his countrymen to kick off their sandals and dance a jig in celebration of the monarch’s defeat, along with her lover Mark Antony, by Octavian, the future emperor Augustus.

The Latin word meaning "to drink" was bibere, source of our verb imBIBE, as well as the adjective BIBulous, for someone who drinks too much, and BIB, something to wear if you’re a baby or a sloppy drunk. The same word has given us BEVERage, Spanish beber, and the tagline of the Athens, Georgia, brewpub Akademia Brewing Company, aut BIBas aut abeas. Adapted from the Roman statesman Cicero, the ancient adage meant "either drink or leave," and was equivalent to our expression "either fish or cut bait." Michelin Tire’s plump Michelin Man mascot and their slogan nunc est bibendum (seen in a floor mosaic in the reception area of the company’s headquarters building) were inspired in large part by a brewery that had considered versions of both for their marketing program.

Cleopatra, who had first seduced Julius Caesar and then later his lieutenant Mark Antony, doubtless enjoyed the occasional adult beverage, just as so many Americans do. And she is perhaps more likely than Antony or Caesar, whose favorite potion was wine (Lat. vinum, as in VINe and VINiferous), to have sampled some of Egypt’s local beers. Indeed the malted brew, in ancient times usually made from barley, or barley bread, sometimes from rye or wheat, was an important element of the Egyptian diet.

The brewing of beer, which may have been discovered accidentally from the natural fermentation of grain, dates back to the neolithic, when farming replaced the nomadic lifestyle of the old stone age and cereal crops came to be routinely cultivated. Archaeological evidence suggests that beer was being produced in Iran 7,000 years ago and in Europe as early as 3,000 B.C. Sumerian texts discovered in 1974 show that Syrians were concocting beer from 2,500 B.C. onward. In the Akkadian Atrahasis epic of the second millennium, the mother goddess Nintu is depicted as thirsting for beer, and the superhuman hero of the later Mesopotamian epic Gilgamesh is advised by Siduri, goddess of beer and wine, to "fill (his) belly and make merry."

Near easterners consumed the beverage with a straw, sometimes from a shared bowl, to avoid the sediment and grains floating on the surface that were common in fresh brew. Ha, I recall being told - and believing - way back in my college days that drinking brewskies through a straw would intensify or at least hasten the buzz!

Though it was never a favorite, Greeks and Romans knew something about beer from their travels. Roman legionnaires often developed a taste for it on tour in provincial outposts, possibly in part because it was cheaper than wine. Romans took the names of local beers from the natives, who also knew about keeping beer (and wine as well as other beverages and produce) chilled in deep underground pits with snow from the mountains - everybody loves an ice-cold brew!

The first-century A.D. polymath Pliny the Elder wrote about an Egyptian beer called zythum as well as a variety in Gaul known as cervesia or cervesa, source of Spanish cerveza. A 2,000-year-old flask from Roman Gaul bears the slogan Ospita reple lagona cervesa (think hOSPITAlity/REPLEnish/fLAGON/CERVEZA), "Guest, refill your bottle with beer!" Another ancient word for beer, curmi, turns up in a third-fourth century A.D. bi-lingual Gaulish-Latin inscription from eastern France that means, "beautiful girl, give me a beer," nata vimpi, curmi da!

On March 22, 1933, the first day of spring and 10 days following his first "fireside chat," President Franklin D. Roosevelt famously remarked, "I think this would be a good time for a beer." He proceeded to sign the Cullen-Harrison Act, legalizing after 13 years of prohibition the sale, purchase, and drinking of the malty brew and other spiritous libations. The law went into effect on April 7, which is recognized around the U.S. as National Beer Day. April 6 is celebrated by some as "New Beer’s Eve," in case you’d like to get an early start at your favorite tavern (Lat. taberna). Just be sure as you hoist that frosty mug to shout out nunc est bibendum and maybe raise a toast to Cleopatra and dear old F.D.R.!

Rick LaFleur is retired from 40 years of teaching Latin language and literature at the University of Georgia, which during his tenure came to have the largest Latin enrollment of all of the nation’s colleges and universities; his latest book is "Ubi Fera Sunt," a lively, lovingly wrought translation into classical Latin of Maurice Sendak’s classic, "Where the Wild Things Are," ranked first on TIME magazine’s 2015 list of the top 100 children’s books of all time.

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.